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item0080E 1108, 1109 1108 27 September 2005 Dear Charles
But the greater problem is the inhumanity and inefficiency of the underlying scheme of administration. Let me put to you three suggestions which would, I believe, both accelerate and improve Home Office administration. Drop me a line
1109 7 November 2005 Pluses & Minuses
Tony Blair is now a particularly dangerous man. He could do real damage, both to Labour and the country, in the last-gasp phase of his premiership. His key projects are manifestly failing all around him, and he can see his "legacy" crumbling on all sides. Yet for a thousand reasons there is no effective challenger, from within the Labour Party, for his office. My own "position on Blair" is an odd one: Apart from Iraq, ASBOs and civil liberties, I support the broad sweep of what Blair is trying to do - in Europe, on the NHS, on education, on pensions - but strategic flaws bedevil the detail. They doom him to failure, at every turn.
The European Union Blair is right to criticise France and Germany and Italy for their inflexible systems, both in the public and the private sectors. But is also understandable that those countries should resent and resist the attempt to impose on Europe "the Anglo-Saxon model" of the economy and the role of the welfare state. That is because our own model is seriously flawed in several respects, and does not yet constitute an acceptable export model. Pensions While Blair castigates his EU partners for their heavy pension commitment, he has yet to come up with an acceptable pensions formula for the UK. This is a key policy sector, where eight years have been wasted, by the Blair Administration. We have no right to preach to our partners, with this key fault-line in our own polity and economy. There are signs that Blairite reform will opt for a much higher basic, universal Old Age Pension, which would be good - but there many, many critical details yet to be worked out.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong In other respects, Blair remains simply wrong, in my view. He is wrong to persist with such weak "unemployment benefit" systems: fear of unemployment is a real factor for many, and could be a future consideration for many more, and the UK system is lousy. He is wrong to believe that current terrorist pressures demand the abandonment of civil liberties. He is wrong to take "the State" into the micro-management of personal lives, with the awful ASBO regime. He is wrong to use harsh authoritarian measures in the routine management of migration. He is wrong to give the Thatcherite impression that trade unions are a busted flush: for example, he should support the legalisation of sympathy strikes, as a proper means of bringing worker-pressure to bear on employers; properly understood, trade unions are an entirely legitimate market activity, and should be given better opportunities to become the champions of the employed.
What do you think? Drop me a line
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My
current preoccupation, as a retired barrister, is with the awful treatment
your Home Office is meting out to asylum-seekers. It is dismissive,
disrespectful, and is administered by civil servants who are not up to the
job. It is quite clear to everyone that, when the political signs are
propitious, there will simply have to be an amnesty of some kind, to address
the plight of the perhaps 250,000 "failed asylum-seekers" currently eking
out a miserable and insecure existence in the UK. That will be,
I accept, a difficult matter of political judgment, if the move is not to
inflame "native" prejudice and public resentment.